Kayseri's Museum of Seljuk Civilisation fills a building eight centuries older than itself: the Gevher Nesibe hospital and the Gıyasiye medrese, standing side by side — which is why the city calls them the Çifte Medrese, the double medrese. They were put up in 1205–1206 by the Seljuk ruler Gıyaseddin Keyhüsrev I on the will of his sister Gevher Nesibe Sultan, daughter of Kılıçarslan II. Plain as its architecture is, the complex is counted among the most important surviving buildings in the architectural history of Anatolia.
Its later life was harder. Partly repaired under the Ottomans but left in ruins, it went through a thorough restoration from the 1960s onward, and from the 1980s Erciyes University used it as a museum of the history of medicine. The municipality took it over in 2012, spent two years on repairs — the roof above all — and on assembling a collection and preparing its content, and opened the Museum of Seljuk Civilisation on 21 February 2014.
The museum is arranged thematically, starting from the history of the city and moving to the Anatolian Middle Ages, and the split between its two halves follows the building. One half is Seljuk civilisation: the Seljuk city, its architecture, art, science and dress, and sections on the Seljuks in Kayseri and in Anatolia at large. The other keeps to what the place was built for, medicine — illnesses, methods and instruments of treatment, the scholars, pharmacy, water and health, and healing by music and by colour.
Objects of the Seljuk and later periods are shown alongside interactive and screen-based displays meant to be listened to, tried and handled rather than only read. There is a children's room with cartoons and games, and rooms within the museum set aside for concerts and other cultural events.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Kayseri as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from -1.5 °C in January to 22.4 °C in July; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June, July, August and September; rainfall is heaviest in May (52 mm) and lightest in August (9 mm). Long-term means for 1931-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
